The Coffee Shop
by A. A. Snook
Summary: Elsie Dawson and her humourous friend Arch Brenwich discover runes around their University in England...


The Coffee Shop  
  
The coffee shop is a neat old place down by the river. Or at least it was. I don't know when you happen to be reading this story. It was two stories high, with a patio off the lower story, and a small balcony on the upper story. Rather big for a coffee shop, but I don't think that that's what it was originally.  
The outside is covered with ivy; it's green in the summer, scarlet and gold in autumn. Its name is simple, the sign outside displays 'The Coffee Shop' in flowing, antique letters, often with a spray or two of ivy hanging in from of or from it. There's always a light on at the Coffee Shop, even when it's closed. It seems to emit a glow from somewhere within.  
  
I'm terribly sorry. Do let me introduce myself. My name is Elsie Dawson. I live in a flat, north of Baker Street in the lovely little town of Hertfordshire, England. I moved here last autumn, for fall term at the university. It is quite a wonderful town, Hertfordshire. Everyone is so quiet and polite, compared to London especially. That's where my family lives, the whole lot of them I have two brothers and a sister, but I am still quite alone at home. My sister is several years my senior, and she is married, with two children. My oldest brother is fifteen years, and the younger is twelve years. Of course my brothers played together, and my sister and I were always far enough apart in age that we were never interested in the same things. Then she moved away at eighteen, and got married at twenty, which was five years ago .  
My mother and father are respectable people, but I don't know how they became so. Their siblings are positively dreadful. Enough about history, however.  
The Coffee Shop is the possibly the best place you could go to. There are many neat little coffee places in town, but none compare to The Coffee Shop. The coffee is wonderful, the owners are the nicest couple, and they have music there quite often. String Quartets, Celtic bands, Songwriters who come in with their guitars and fingerpick tuneless melodies while reciting poems.  
I'm a musician of sorts, I have a little mandolin in my flat that I play on, but I do not wish to play in front of others. In fact, I'm sure very few people know that I play. There was this ancient bloke that lived up the lane from my flat, and he was a great musician, he could 'play anything with strings' but he was my mandolin teacher from the time I moved here until the time that he died. He had a stroke, about three weeks ago now. But I'll never forget what he taught me.  
As I write this, I sit inside The Coffee Shop, watching the snowflakes fall down past the window and whirling around each other. I have but one real friend left in this town. His name is Archable Brenwich. I met him at the University last fall, during a particularly interesting incident involving his experiment and my shoes. We are not quite certain how this happened, but we'll never know!  
Ah, here is now! I can never avoid him and his scatterbrained ideas for any length of time.  
'Elsie! Elsie! You won't believe what I've found! This is amazing!" Archable blurted out, as he came to the table.  
"I'll bet I can't figure out what it is you are about to show me, Arch." I answered in sarcastic tones that he seemed to miss. "But why don't you sit down, and tell me what it is, I'll get us something to drink."  
He sat down, and the waitress scurried over to us. "You'll be wantin' another, then?" she asked me. "For me, yes, thank you. Arch?"  
He looked up suddenly, startled. "Uh, yes, thank you. Er- well, the usual for me, if you'd be so kind, Betty. Or is it Brunehilda?"  
"Bonnie!" we cried at the same time. "Oh, right. Of course, thank you, Bonnie." The usual. A hazelnut latte for me, a _________________ for him.  
"Anyway, Elsie. I'll be serious now. I found these figures on the internet. They are some sort of modern rune, or so ancient that no one has seen them before."  
  
"Wow, Arch. These are cool! What made you suddenly interested in rune lore? Just an idea that you read about in one of your books?"  
He put aside his drink and leaned closer. I leaned closer. "This is a secret, you can't tell ANYONE, Elsie." He paused. "There might, possibly, be runes like these in this very Coffee shop, Elsie."  
I was interested now. I looked around to see if anyone was watching us. Of course, I should've known. We were always here, and always looked suspicious, so no one ever noticed us anyway.  
"Here? In our coffee shop? Not likely, I'll bet. How do you know this, have you seen them?" I couldn't believe that our coffee shop could actually be interesting. But then again, he'd said two not very reassuring words: "might" and "possibly".  
"No, I haven't seen them. But I've found these same runes at the University. And I have reason to believe that these runes are clues to something, and that they are linked to different places. Like a map, only in runes."  
Of course, count on Arch to think of something like that. It was worth a shot, though. And winter terms are always boring at University, so I figured that we would need something to do in our spare time, which we had so much of these days.  
"Go on, what's your plan?" I urged him.  
  
He wouldn't tell me his plan in the coffee shop, so he wrote me this note, along with the code that he'd made out. Which of course didn't say what his plan was either, in case it was intercepted, he assured me. All it said was that he was going to meet me in my dorm (mine, why is it always mine?) at midnight to discuss his plan.  
Maybe Arch thought that it was more exciting to sneak into my dorm at midnight than it was to have someone sneak into his dorm at midnight. Well, in any case it wasn't fair, I would get into trouble if we were caught, since it's my dorm, and I wouldn't get any adventure out of the deal.  
Our dorms are not like normal University dorms. It's a very small University, so none of the rooms are very big. Only room to hold one person, possibly two if you begged to have a room mate.  
So that made it easy for sneaking in and out of them, you didn't have to explain to anyone why you were going out the window at five minutes to midnight, or why someone was crawling in your window at exactly midnight.  
So that night I turned out the lights and pretended to be asleep when they came by to check and make sure that I was in bed (they feel a need to do this at the University for some reason, probably some fault of Arch's.)  
  
Soon after, I heard Arch come in the window, not so gracefully either. He was trying to carry parchments and quill and whatnot. "Arch! Be careful, it's not that important. I have writing utensils here, you know..." "I know Elsie. But I have different things that I want to try out. This is special parchment, and special ink you see." "I see. Well, anyway, we'd better get started on whatever you wanted to do, we do have school in the morning, remember?" Arch turned on the small lamp on my bedside table, and spread all of his stuff on the bed. "See, here I have made a rubbing of the runes I found here near Professor Clerig's English class. I believe that they are the second, or possibly the third 'site' of runes from a possible map that someone must've set up for someone to follow. "Us?" I inquired. "Well, not necessarily US you see, but just, people. Someone. You see what I'm saying?" He said irritably. "Sorry, I'm sorry, I was only joking! Anyway, go on. About the rune map, what does the rubbing say?" Arch pulled the rubbing out, and handed it to me. "Those were, as I said, just outside professor Clerig's room. Around the base of the third and fourth column under the tall windows." I studied them. "How did you happen to find these, Arch?" He blushed. "I'm always on the lookout for an excuse to skip Professor Clerig's classes. This time, I just happened to actually find something." "Hmm. I see. What do these mean? It took me forever to figure our that rune note, 10 minutes at least, and that was with your code, as well! These look so much the same!" Arch looked a little troubled. "well, I had hoped that you would be able to tell me what it means. I'm a scientist kinda guy, I collect data and do experiments. I have no experience with runes." Sigh. Alright then, leave things up to me again. "Okay, I'll see what I can do, this may take me all night, though. Hey! What's this?" I reached for a sheet with runes and letters on it. "Oh, that. Well," he confessed, "I worked on parts of it during English. I wanted to show you at the Coffee Shop, but it wasn't done. "Archable Brenwich!" He winced. "you were late to class because you HAD to make a rbbing, then you spent the rest of class trying to figure out what they mean?! What about your gra—never mind, I don't even want to know what your grade is in Professor Clerig's class." I glared at him. He glared back. "Are you going to figure it out or not? Or are you just going to rant at me all night because I found some runes for you?" I gave in. "Alright, alright, I'm sorry!" I apologized for the second time. "Now give me a moment's peace to finish this!" ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
By the time I had finished, Arch was fast asleep near the foot of the bed. I wanted to just leave him there and fall asleep myself, but he had school in the morning too.  
"Arch." I shook him. "Arch, wake up Arch." I shook him harder. Bloody.... it was 3:30 in the morning! "Arch!!" I said as loudly as I dared. He finally woke up. "Elsie, what is it? Did you finish it?"  
"Oh, I finished it alright. You'd better go back to you dorm, it's nearly four. It'll be getting lighter soon, you don't want to get caught."  
"Oh right." He started to gather up the parchment and quills.  
"Just leave it in my dorm, I'll put it in the desk. Just go ahead. I think they'll be safer in here anyway, so they won't bother you anymore, if you catch my drift..." I said meaningfully.  
I think he caught my drift, for he left soon enough, just as gracefully as he'd entered. I put the papers carefully in the desk, as I'd promised, and fell wearily into bed, asleep before my head hit the pillow.  
Morning came all too soon for Arch and me. Sooner for me than Arch, as I hear it. How many classes can that boy be late for in just one week?!  
"You are lucky I didn't have any exams today." I threatened Arch over lunch. "I would kill you."  
"I'm lucky? What do you mean? I didn't keep you up that whole time, now did I?" He said innocently.  
"Sure, sure. Anyway, here's what I translated" I said as I handed the paper to him. "I didn't really read it too carefully last night. I was too tired for that. But that's what I thought it said at the time.  
He gave me a one-eyebrowed look. "Oh no, a paper by Elsie Dawson that's not even been proofread?! Are you feeling well, Elsie? This would be worth money someday!" he said mockingly.  
"I hope you'll earn your living by some means, in any case." I looked at him apprehensively. "Well, what do you think it means? That's one thing I haven't found out in the time that I've looked at it. I have no idea what this verse means!"  
Arch looked at it. "Maybe that's something I can try to figure out...—"  
I stopped him. "Figure it out after school today, since it's Friday. Until then, I keep these, so you won't waste any more time in English, or any other class for that matter. Where and when shall we meet?"  
Arch thought. "Well, let's meet at my dorm at 5:00. I have an idea, and that should give me enough time after school to work on it. Deal?"  
We shook hands. "Deal. May I ask what it is you're going to—?"  
He interrupted. "Nope. It's a surprise. But I need the verse. Please?"  
He had me again. "Alright, here. But not during school, ok?"  
Arch took it. "You don't trust me?"  
Ha! "Not with anything, but we made a deal. See you after school then, your dorm, 5:oo sharp!" ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ 


End file.
